Jesus is Our Confidence

How confident are you about living out your faith so that people know you’re a follower of Jesus? How confident are you in your relationship with the Father? How confident are you in living out what you believe in everyday life? The reason I ask these questions is that many Christ followers struggle with living out their faith. Instead, we tend to compartmentalize our faith. We’ve been schooled by our culture to keep our faith private. As such, we can fall into this habit of separating our public life from our private beliefs. And when we do that, the people we associate with on a daily basis don’t really see how our lives are all that different from theirs. And the reason why, is often that you lack the confidence you need to shine your light for Jesus.

Now, another reason you may lack confidence to live out your faith, to stand out as different from the world, is that you have a misplaced confidence. In other words, you lack confidence in your ability to love like Christ loved you, or you lack confidence to talk about your faith, or you’re just unsure about how to show your faith. As a result, you may have become an expert at keeping your faith hidden. Oh sure, you’d like to have the confidence to shine your light, love your neighbor, speak boldly of Jesus, but rather than living with such confidence, you’re afraid you’ll blow it, or offend, or you just feel like you don’t have what it takes. And if that’s where you find yourself today, then what we’re going to look at from God’s Word this morning might just change everything for you. Why? Because God never meant for you to buck yourself up with your own confidence but to live out of the confidence that’s found in Christ.

You see, we get it all wrong. We think it’s about our self-confidence. But our self-confidence is fragile. Left to ourselves, we stumble, we embarrass ourselves and we fail. And since we don’t like to embarrass ourselves or fail, we chose the way of least resistance, and never really learn what it takes to live by faith. Why? Because our confidence for living the Christian life is misplaced. This is why it’s so important for us to build our faith on who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. For our confidence was never meant to be in ourselves, it’s meant to come from Jesus. In other words, Jesus is our confidence for living out our faith the way God intended.

So, if you lack confidence in living out your faith, then you’re actually in a pretty good place today. Because God’s Word has much to say about where our confidence is found. So, if you’re struggling with confidence to live out your faith today, then let me encourage you to open your Bible to Hebrews 10:19-25, where the writer of Hebrews shows us where our confidence is found. It’s found in Jesus. So, if you’ve found Hebrews 10, let’s look at the first way Jesus is our confidence:

The writer begins in verse 19, by laying out the reason for finding our confidence in Christ, reminding us that, Jesus is our confidence to live a new life with God: Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, His body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God, Hebrews 10:19-22a The writer lays out the foundation for our confidence in Christ in two ways. First, he begins by reminding us that Jesus has given us access to the very presence of God by His blood. His blood opens the door to a new and living way to God through His body. If you are in Christ, you now possess what the Old Testament saints did not: the right to enter through the holy place and into the very presence of God. Jesus has opened this new and living way by His life and His death, so that you can enjoy a relationship with God that’s unprecedented.
Not only do we have this new and living way available to us through Christ’s body, we also have Jesus. He’s our greatest possession: “we have a great priest over the house of God” I love how pastor Richard Phillips describes what we have as a basis for our relationship with God. He says: “We have two things: confidence to enter and a great high priest. The point is that the one who opened and secured the way for us into God’s presence is there Himself. He is there as our priest, representing us and pleading effectually for our acceptance, securing and sending us the Holy Spirit so that we are fitted and empowered to be worshipers and priests before His throne. Because our high priest is there, we can know that we belong there, too, and can thus approach with confidence.”

In other words, Jesus is our confidence that ensures your relationship with the Father is unlimited. If you’ve trusted in Jesus, you have access to the Father anytime and anyplace. He has opened the way to God through His body, and He remains in God’s presence, ensuring you can always come to the Father through Him. Now, with this unprecedented access to the Father, the author describes four benefits of our new relationship with God.

First, Through Jesus we can draw near to God with sincere hearts We can now stand before God certain that our sins are forgiven by virtue of our faith in Jesus. This is a picture of a true heart. With a true heart, we can relate to God with right affections, right motives and right priorities. With a true heart we can now know the Father’s heart. This is a tremendous blessing. Jesus has connected our hearts to the Father’s heart! There is no greater blessing than to draw near the creator of your heart who wants to fill your heart with His joy, His pleasure and His will. Through Jesus you can know God! But that’s not all. Next we see that…

Through Jesus we can draw near to God with full assurance This is the point the author has been hammering home for weeks. Because of Jesus’ blood and his role as our High Priest, we can have full assurance that our salvation is 100% secure in Christ.

Full assurance of faith has been a matter of Christian turmoil and controversy for centuries. As I’ve said before, many Christians struggle with the certainty of their salvation. But it’s God who grants us our assurance, not on the basis of our faith, but on the basis of Christ’s faithfulness. The apostle John wrote these words: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:13. Eternal life is a present possession given to anyone who believes in Jesus. You can’t lose it! Jesus said it this way: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned but has crossed over from death to life.” John 5:24 If you’ve trusted in Jesus, you possess eternal life because you possess Jesus. The risen Jesus lives in you. He is eternal and He promises to never leave nor forsake you. He guarantees this using the perfect tense verb when He speaks of you crossing over from the realm of death to the realm of life. This is a one-time crossing over with permanent results. It’s based on His Word, not your behavior. Once you believe in Him, you are removed from the dominion of darkness and transferred once and for all into the kingdom of God’s Son.

Jesus expands on this in John 10, saying, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” John 10:27-30 Again, your salvation is all of God. He gives eternal life as a gift to those who believe; and no one has the power to snatch you away. Not even you! Once you belong to Him, you will always be His possession, and He will never let you go.

Paul spells out God’s personal guarantee, writing it this way: “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of His glory.” Ephesians 1:13-14 Your assurance of salvation is a matter of God’s doing, and it’s a matter of God’s keeping, and it’s a matter of God’s glory. And it’s all secured by Jesus the moment you believe. You are included in Christ, and this is a permanent union. This is the assurance that faith brings! Stop trusting in your feelings and trust in God’s Word. God saved you. He will keep you. You are His. He will never take His Spirit away from you. He personally guarantees that one day He will carry you home to be with Him forever! So today, Jesus is our confidence, through Him we can always draw near to God with full assurance. Thirdly,

Through Jesus we can draw near to God with a clear conscience Here, the writer uses covenant language to say, “having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience” In other words, just as the blood spilled and sprinkled purified God’s people under the old covenant, Christ’s blood purifies us under the new covenant. Jesus’ blood, however, cleanses us with superior power and efficiency. His blood, unlike that of bulls and goats, purifies the conscience. What that means is this: Jesus’ blood sets you free from a guilty conscience. Through His blood you can know your sins are removed and your heart set free from the burden of guilt.

I remember the first time I saw this become a reality for a new believer. When I was a youth Pastor, we took students to a week-long training program called SEMP, (Students Equipped to Minister to their Peers). They were trained in Evangelism and Apologetics, and we would hit the beaches of Santa Cruz each afternoon to share a spiritual questionnaire with the hopes that people might be open to hearing more about the gospel of Jesus. I remember, one afternoon as we shared with a young lady the good news of forgiveness and salvation found in Jesus. She understood and wanted to receive Jesus as her Savior. So, she trusted in Jesus. After she was done praying, I asked her: “So, do you feel any differently.” Her answer, “I feel lighter, like a weight has been lifted. I don’t feel guilty anymore.” Through Jesus we can draw near to God with a clean conscience! And finally,

Through Jesus we can draw near to God with new hearts The writer concludes this section by saying, and having our bodies washed with pure water. Many commentators refer to this as water baptism, but it’s important for us to see what baptism symbolizes: the spiritual renewal that’s the work of the Holy Spirit. In speaking of what God would do for us through the blood of Jesus, God said, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:25-26 When you trust in Jesus, you’re not simply cleansed of all sin and guilt, God puts His Spirit in you and gives you a new nature. This is why you are able to draw near to God. The moment you believe, God gives you a new heart, or a new nature. You are now spiritually alive to God. This is just another blessing of being united with Christ by faith. Jesus makes it possible for you, who were once spiritually dead to God, to experience a new life with God. He’s given you a true heart, full assurance of faith, cleansed you of all guilt, and given you His Spirit, so you can now relate to God, just like He does. Therefore, our confidence to live with God today comes from Jesus! Jesus is our confidence to live a new life with God.

This is the heart of Christianity. The blood of Jesus makes it possible for you to have an intimate relationship with God. Are you experiencing this? Are you taking advantage of your access to the Father? Do you have a clean conscience and a heart that’s alive to God? This is where our confidence in Christ begins, it begins when your heart is made new and clean by the blood of Jesus. From here is where we can now move forward to see what other confidences Christ gives us. Let’s look now at the second one:

2. Jesus is our confidence to live with hope: The writer now speaks to the truth we hold onto in order to live differently in our world by saying, Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23 They key to understanding how we are to live with hope is this phrase, “let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess.” What he’s referring to here is the unwavering stance Christ followers must make to stand firm in all the gospel truths that are found in in Jesus. We live in a day where people are quick to compromise the truth out of fear of offense. But this is a dangerous place to live. In fact, one of the most dangerous movements afoot today is this that you can believe in Jesus, but throw out all the truth that comes with Him. Those who do this are deconstructing the gospel of Jesus Christ and are taking only the truths that appeal to them. I even saw a big banner on College Game day, yesterday morning asking people to turn to Jesus. At the bottom of the banner, it said “No Church, No religion, Just Jesus.” They threw out the truth that Jesus loves the Church. He laid down His life for the Church. He dwells in the midst of His Church, and His church is His chosen vehicle for changing the world.

So, this is a call to be people who are holding fast to all the truths of the gospel. That’s what this letter is all about. We need to know all that Jesus did and all who Jesus is. The more we understand Jesus as God’s final revelation, the more we understand His superiority over angels and how He’s able to save us completely and bring us into a relationship with God. The more we understand the power of the atonement – how God’s washed away every sin and removed our condemnation; The more we learn of His mercy and rest in His grace, the more our confidence will grow in Jesus. And then we will live with His confidence in a world without hope. And the key to standing strong in Gods’ truth, is not our determination, but Christ’s faithfulness. He’s done it all for us. Jesus gives us the confidence we need to live with hope.

And with that confidence, He unleashes us to live a life of love: Jesus is our confidence to live with love: Let’s read the verses: And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25 To wrap up this passage the writer gives us two ways our confidence in Jesus helps us become the people God has created us to be: First, Through Jesus, we can provoke one another to love and good deeds This is something we are to do together. We are to give intentional thought to how we can love one another. That’s what it means to consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds. We are accustomed to thinking only of ourselves. But when Jesus is our confidence, when we are loved by Jesus, we will begin to see others differently.

We’ll be able to consider them with the mind of Christ. We’ll begin to think about our brothers and sisters and ask ourselves: how are they doing? How would Jesus want me to love them? How would Jesus want me to care for them right now? This is a revolutionary new way of thinking. This is what Christ created the church to be. To be a people who “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Philippians 2:3-4. This is how we are to think! We are to think of one another, the same way Jesus thinks of us. And the more we do this, the easier it will be to love them and do good for them.

The second way our confidence in Jesus can help us be the people God has created us to be is this: Through Jesus, we can encourage one another To come alongside one another with words and actions that will strengthen them in Christ. It may mean bearing a load for them, it may mean praying for them, it may mean encouraging them with truth when they are weak in the faith. It may mean just being there for them, and not trying to fix them, but just being the presence of Jesus with them.

Like climbers roped together on a steep mountain, like soldiers teamed together on a battlefield, we must keep track of one another. We must work together to reach our objective safely. That’s why there’s no place for lone rangers in God’s family. God put us together so we could be Christ to one another. This is why we have Journey Groups. For as we learn to follow Jesus together, one of the first things He will change in you, is your love for your brothers and sisters in Christ. And when He fills you with His love for a brother or sister, then the Holy Spirit is set free to comfort, build up, and encourage. Through Jesus, we can encourage one another. And we all need this encouragement.

For when we love and encourage one another in Christ, not only will be strengthened in our faith, but the world will see and know that God is real, that your faith is real, for every time you do something to love or encourage a fellow believer, your life will shine for Jesus.

There you have it. We started this message by asking you how confident are you about living out your faith so that people know you’re a follower of Jesus? And for most of us, if we’re honest, we lack confidence to live out our faith because we have a misplaced confidence. And if that’s you today, all I can say is this: Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Build your faith and your life on who Jesus is and what He’s done for you.
For when you do:

Jesus will be the confidence you need to enjoy your relationship with the Father! Jesus will be the confidence you need to stand firm in the truths of the gospel Jesus will be the confidence you need so to love others just as Jesus loved you!

For when Jesus is your confidence, not only will you live out your faith the way God intended, but you’ll now be also free to shine for Jesus.